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Youth homelessness not just a downtown Toronto issue

By Jackie BurnsSpecial to the Star

Sun., Oct. 25, 2015

Not every young person in the GTA is staying up at night, stressing over how they can get their hands on a shiny new iPhone 6s. Instead, many youth are lying awake worrying about where their next meal will come from or how much longer they will have a roof over their heads.

A new United Way report proves it’s not all fun and games being a kid in the GTA, with more than a quarter of the region’s youth considered low-income, living in households where the annual income is below 50 per cent of the median household income in the city.

It’s also becoming increasingly harder for young people to find jobs; the GTA’s youth unemployment rate is higher than all other Canadian cities. TD Economics has estimated that the rise in youth unemployment since 2008 has resulted in more than $10 billion in earnings loss for the country.

But perhaps the most bitter pill to swallow in this crisis facing the region’s young people is that there is also a growing youth homelessness problem, and it’s not just a downtown Toronto issue..

York Region has 12.9 per cent of its youth living below the poverty line, and on any given night in the area, there are up to 300 homeless youth, according to 360 Kids, an agency working with youth in crisis. By comparison, downtown Toronto has about 900 homeless kids each night.

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The United Way is well aware of the developing crisis in York Region, and as part of their ongoing research, they joined forces with Dr. Stephen Gaetz, the director of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, who co-authored the report “Leaving Home: Youth Homelessness in York Region.”

The research project, led by United Way York Region, was conducted in 2013 with 60 young people who had experienced homelessness as well as a number of service providers.

It found that at the centre of most youth homelessness are issues within the family, with 92 per cent of participants reporting conflict with parents or caregivers was a factor that contributed to their homelessness. Almost 60 per cent also reported either physical or sexual abuse as being a contributing factor in their decision to leave home.

With low-cost housing in York Region also in short supply, and the vacancy rate for rental housing low, young people who are living on their own also reported finding it challenging to secure accommodation, pushing them toward life on the streets.

Gaetz, who is also a professor at York University, said while the study confirmed a lot of universal triggers for youth homelessness, the real shock came for the people of York Region, who may not have been aware that so many of their young people were living in such desperate situations.

“I think for the community, the surprise was just the degree of homelessness that young people experience. People in other parts of the city or the country may imagine that youth homelessness is a downtown or big city problem, when the things that drive youth homelessness are present in every community in the country. A homeless youth could come from any street.”

Gaetz said while Toronto has about 4,000 emergency beds for its population of 2.6 million, York Region only has about 130 beds for its one million residents. “They don’t have the infrastructure,” he said. “If young people don’t have supports in their community, then they have to leave.”

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Gaetz said as a result of this lack of community support, a lot of young people who are homeless in downtown Toronto have actually come from York or Peel regions, which creates even more challenges for them. “You don’t just lose your parents and your house, you lose your family, you lose your friends, your school, your connections at school, you have lost all those natural supports and then you wind up in Toronto where you are not going to have enough food to eat. You’re going to be in greater danger. There is greater exploitation happening. It’s rough if you become homeless in these areas where people think homelessness isn’t an issue.”

With young people making up about 20 per cent of the national homeless population, Gaetz says it’s ridiculous that as a society, we would ever question whether or not we can afford to tackle this problem. “If we don’t take care of youth homelessness today, we are actually investing in chronic homelessness tomorrow. We are investing in criminal involvement. We’re investing in something that’s going to cost us a whole lot more and lead to more damaged lives.”

And it looks like it’s already costing us; recent data from a March 2013 Ipsos Reid poll suggests that as many as 1.3 million Canadians have experienced homelessness or extremely insecure housing at some point during the past five years. But measuring homelessness accurately has always been a tricky task with so many people couch surfing at friends or relatives’ houses and not accessing emergency services where they can be tracked.

For those who do end up on the streets, the stigma is always there, and with street kids, it’s no exception. These false stereotypes need to stop, Gaetz said, because most factors that lead young people to the streets are most often out of their control. “Everybody has to recognize that young people who are homeless aren’t delinquent deviants; they’re young people who came from families where things didn’t go well.

“All young people need shelter, safety, food, opportunity, they need love, they need a caring adult in their life. And why we would assume that young people who have to leave home, who are experiencing trauma, should just pull themselves up by their boot straps and get out of that situation? We don’t do that with kids who are housed. It’s just unreasonable to create this double standard.”

Gaetz points to a successful model in Australia, which has, rather than invest in emergency shelters for youth, instead focused on preventing homelessness. Bringing community-based agencies into schools and doing presentations with staff and young people around the issue of homelessness not only helped increase awareness, but subsequent interventions with needy students helped drop youth homelessness there by 20 per cent. “That’s the approach you should take in an area like York Region; not build more warehouses for homeless youth,” he said.

Community-based agencies like 360 Kids or Blue Door Shelters have great track records working with kids locally, Gaetz said, adding there needs to be a collective impact approach between agencies like these and the school boards, corrections and health care sectors.

SIDEBAR:

THE PROBLEM: It’s hard to be a kid — and even harder when you’re a kid facing economic or social barriers beyond your control.

STATS — HOW DO WE KNOW THIS IS AN ISSUE?

— Over a quarter of Toronto’s youth are considered low-income, living in households whose annual income is below 50 per cent of the median household income in the city.

— 12.9 per cent of York Region’s youth are living below the poverty line.

— Youth unemployment is above 18 per cent across the Toronto region and nearly 22 per cent in the city of Toronto.

— People are worried about the next generation. Over 50 per cent of Torontonians said they believe the next generation will be worse off in an EKOS-UWT survey in 2014.

— Toronto has the highest child poverty rate (29 per cent) among large areas in Canada. It also has the highest child poverty rate in Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, followed by Hamilton (22.3 per cent) and Peel (20.6 per cent).

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